Norse UFOs: What are the glowing orbs of Hessdalen?

Uncanny balls of light are flying around a Norwegian valley. After three decades of detective work, we could be close to solving the mystery

“IT IS a very nice evening in the Norwegian mountains, there is a clear sky and the stars are around us. Everything is cold, it’s a fantastic view and then out of nowhere – pow! It ignites.” Bjorn Gitle Hauge pauses and shakes his head in disbelief. “When you’ve seen it you can’t forget it. You wonder, how can this happen?”

Hauge, an electrical engineer at Østfold University College in Halden, Norway, is recalling his first encounter, seven years ago, with the Hessdalen phenomenon&colon; strange, hovering, flashing balls of light that have been appearing in a valley in central Norway for at least a century.

(Image&colon; Sam Chivers)

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Sometimes the lights are as big as cars and can float around for up to 2 hours. Other times they zip down the valley before suddenly fading away. Then there are the blue and white flashes that come and go in the blink of an eye, and daytime sightings that look like metallic objects in the sky. It is little wonder that when they started appearing up to 20 times a week in the early 1980s, UFOlogists hailed the Hessdalen valley as a portal to other worlds and flocked there to celebrate.

Video: Mysterious Norwegian lights caught on camera

But for an international team that has been studying the mysterious lights since then, the valley harbours something much more exciting than flying saucers. If they can work out what it …